Using a large sample of nonprofit organizations in the United States reporting governance information on their IRS Forms 990, we develop and evaluate several different composite measures of nonprofit governance. These measures can be used to control for governance broadly in a variety of settings, including research that examines nonprofit funding, reporting quality, and executive compensation. Our results suggest that relatively basic indices perform as well as, and in some cases better than, more complex indices. In fact, when controlling for governance in the standard donations model, the collective evidence indicates that an index computed using the simple sum of five binary indicators (audit committee, majority independent board, no outsourcing, CEO salary review, and information available on website) performs best.

SUMMARY We investigate the relationship between Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspection outcomes and auditors' use of structured audit technologies (SATs) by conducting interviews with audit partners of firms inspected annually by the PCAOB, surveying triennially-inspected auditing firms, and relating auditors' reported SAT adoptions and use with their firm-specific inspection outcomes. It has been observed that auditors are adopting SATs to improve PCAOB inspection outcomes. While our evidence is consistent with this observation and motivation, we do not find evidence that SATs are an effective strategy to improve inspection outcomes. We discuss the potential reasons for this inconsistency, the most important of which may be auditors' expressed concerns about the negative impact SATs have on auditors' critical thinking skills, professional judgment, and skepticism. Supplemental tests relating auditors' SAT adoptions to their client-specific audit fees also provide initial support for auditors' reports that SATs are efficient audit tools.

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SYNOPSIS We examine whether regulations requiring accelerated filing deadlines and internal control reporting and testing affect financial statement reliability. Unlike prior research, we examine whether these regulatory changes are associated with an increase in the likelihood that misstatements originate in the period following the respective change. If the implementation of these rules causes a misstatement, then the misstatement would most likely occur in the period immediately following the rule change. We provide evidence that accelerated filers (AFs) experience an increase in the likelihood of an originating misstatement following the acceleration of filing deadlines from 90 to 75 days. Large accelerated filers (LAFs), however, do not experience a similar increase following this acceleration or the subsequent acceleration from 75 to 60 days. After the implementation of the SOX Section 404 internal control requirements, we find that the likelihood of an originating misstatement declined for AFs but not for LAFs. Taken together, the findings suggest that, although AFs experienced an initial decrease in financial statement reliability, this decrease was temporary. Data Availability: Data are publicly available from the sources identified in the text.